Just for interest - photos of a project I'm doing - creating a stone to fit in this ring setting. The original stone broke and was lost and the customer asked me to create a new stone and reset it. Shown with it's future setting and with the size of stone I started with. An 8 by 10mm oval seemed like a good starting point to grind down to the 4 by 8.5mm oblong size I need for the setting:
The little black onyx stone on it's dop stick - I spent yesterday grinding it to this shape with 120 diamond grit. The dop stick is basically just a wooden dowel with dopping wax melted on the end. The dopping wax is very sticky when hot and pliable so it can be attached to the stone but at room temperature it gets hard and can hold the stone while you work on it. When I'm all done I will put it in the freezer and the stone should pop off easily:
This is the spool polisher I will use today to get a nice polish on the little stone. Those syringes in back hold grades of diamond cream which correspond to the different areas on the spool that I will apply the cream to. I will work the stone from 350 grit up through 50,000 grit to a high shine:
I will need to do some adjustments to the silver ring setting too. I think the original stone broke and fell out because it needed a more stable base for the stone so I will be adding a sterling plate to make a solid bottom for the setting.
